Kevin-J Anderson

Many familiar names appear; Salusa Secundus now green and fertile, but fated to become a hellhole prison planet, is one of the free human enclaves on the fringes of Omnius's "Synchronized Worlds". So is Giedi Prime, later the evil Harkonnen HQ. Both are attacked by fearsome robot fleets and ex-human cyborg killers when Omnius makes a new expansionist push. Much space-operatic mayhem follows.

Major characters include Serena Butler, who will become the driving force of the jihad against computer dictatorship; her lover Xavier Harkonnen, heroic defender of Salusa Secundus; Vorian Atreides, son of Omnius's chief cyborg Agamemnon, convinced by slanted histories that the Synchronized Worlds are the good guys; Erasmus, an independent robot who plays devil's advocate to Omnius and conducts unspeakably gory experiments to determine the wayward nature of humanity; and Selim, a desert exile on planet Arrakis (Dune), who becomes the first man to master the dread sandworms.

Many other firsts are rather improbably crowded together here. This is the first serious export of Dune's life-prolonging spice; the first (perhaps) spice-induced prophetic vision; first forcefield body shield; and the first antigravity "suspensors" that are invented by a girl genius who may be the first Mentat--those super-gifted humans who will replace prohibited computers. She's also busy inventing the first interstellar jump-drive. Elsewhere, telepathic "Sorceresses" prefigure the Reverend Mothers of the Bene Gesserit.

Despite a few nuances like the "good" society being flawed by its toleration of slavery, The Butlerian Jihad lacks the richness of Frank Herbert's work--his psychological intensity, the multi-layered subtlety of his characters' schemes and duel-like conversations. Instead, this is straightforwardly rousing space opera, with battle, counterstrikes, kidnapping, vows of vengeance, a fateful love triangle, and lashings of gratuitous violence and dismemberment. --David Langford
Contextually superb extension of the Dune universe!, 2009-05-18
I have read many reviews of this book that give a very poor rating; the most prominent criticism tends to be that the quality of writing doesn't match the original Frank Herbert stories.
I think that people are forgetting the context in which this book needs to be placed.
Firstly, this story tells of a time before the mind-expansive propertires of Melange had been discovered -- and this directly influences the nature of the writing itself (because the characters are not as enlightened, spaced-out and transcendental).
Secondly, a significant proportion of the cast are thinking machines, whereas the original Dune stories were set in a time when such 'robots' had been outlawed -- this meant that Frank Herbert's originals had a greater human depth (a depth of humanity that would be out of place when machines so often take the centre stage).
The story was totally enjoyable for me (a great fan of the original books); i loved learning the origins of things that were only very small aspects of the original books (thumpers, crysknives, etc) as well as the origins of vital family conflicts that actually dominated the original.
My only criticism of this book is that the reference to the disparity between machine and man does get a little laboured at times, but it's a story that needs to be told if we are to understand how the Butlerian Jihad shaped the universe.
I love it, and i heartily recommend it.